The Interdisciplinary Centre for Advanced Materials Simulation (ICAMS) at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany, invites applications for a doctoral candidate (m / f / d) to develop an efficient sampling and representation strategy for the grain boundary geometry and composition space with atomistic simulations and mathematical methods. The available position is third-party funded and comprises ~30 hours/week for three years.

The Ruhr-University Bochum (RUB) is one of Germany's leading universities. All important fields of research can be found on our campus. The close proximity of different disciplines and their cultures offers excellent opportunities for interdisciplinary collaborations for researchers and students. On top of that, Bochum offers affordable prices for housing and a broad cultural program.

ICAMS is an international research center at RUB, which focuses on the development and application of a new generation of simulation tools for multi-scale materials modeling.

The project is associated with ongoing research activities in the Mechanical Properties of Interfaces group of Dr. Rebecca Janisch. For more details on our research activities please refer to http://www.icams.de/content/departments/micromechanical-and-macroscopic-modelling/mechanical-properties-of-interfaces/ . For the mathematical aspects of the project, we collaborate with the working group for statistics of Prof. Holger Dette at RUB.

Background: Modern attempts to optimize materials’ properties increasingly explore data based research strategies. With this project we want to replace common high-throughput approaches to generate materials data by a selective and efficient computational framework. The energies of grain boundaries with different structure and composition will be determined with atomistic simulations in combination with new design of experiment techniques and nonparametric estimation. The resulting scheme shall be used to provide grain boundary energies as a function geometry and composition as input for thermodynamic and kinetic, as well as micromechanical modeling.

The candidate must hold a degree in physics, chemistry, material science, or a related field. He/she should have comprehensive experience in atomistic simulation methods. Furthermore, a profound interest in crystallography, point group symmetries and grain boundary structure models is required. We expect adequate language skills for writing publications and research proposals in English, as well as programming skills and proficiency in working with the Linux operating system.

At Ruhr-Universität Bochum, we particularly want to promote the careers of women in the areas in which they are underrepresented, and we are therefore very pleased to receive applications of women. The applications of suitably qualified handicapped persons or of persons of equal legal status are also welcome.

We are looking forward to your application including your CV, publication list, a statement of research interests, and the contact details of at least two referees.

Please send your documents to [email protected]. The application deadline is July 15th, 2019.